Sri Ramakrishna Ashrma.Yadavagiri,Mysore

Sri Ramakrishna, the prophet of modern India was born in the village of Kamarpukur, 70 miles west of Calcutta, on 18th February 1836, and brought up in a pious, devout and simple rural atmosphere. Gadadhar (childhood name) grew up into a healthy and restless boy, full of fun and sweet mischief. He was intelligent precocious and endowed with a prodigious memory, which enabled him to repeat, just after hearing only once. To listen to recitations of stories from Hindu mythology and the epics was his greatest delight. Painting he enjoyed, the art of moulding images of the gods and goddesses he learnt from the potters. But arithmetic was his great aversion. He was endowed with a yearning for the vision of God from his very childhood, at the age six or seven Gadadhar had his first experience of spiritual ecstasy. Neglecting his studies, he sat with wandering monks and pilgrims, and played religious dramas with his young companions. To turn his mind to a useful education, he was brought to Calcutta in his seventeenth year. Gadadhar, however, observed that the aim of all secular knowledge was mere material advancement, and he resolved to devote himself solely to the pursuit of spiritual knowledge, which would ensure eternal peace. Being insisted by his brother to studies, his reply was - "Brother, what shall I do with a mere bread-winning education? I would rather acquire that wisdom which will illumine my heart and give me satisfaction for ever".

Circumstance now so shaped themselves that within a short time he became the priest of the Kali temple at Dakshineswar. The worship of God was after his heart and he took to the duties of the new vocation with great zeal and enthusiasm. As his love for God deepened, he began either to forget or to drop the formalities of worship. Sitting before the image, he would spend hours singing the devotional songs of great devotees of the Mother. Those soul stirring songs, describing the direct vision of God, only intensified Sri Ramakrishna's longing. He felt the pangs of a child separated from its mother. Sometimes, in agony, he would rub his face against the ground and weep so bitterly that people, thinking he had lost his earthly mother, would sympathize with him in his grief. Sometimes, in moments of scepticisim, he would cry: "Are you true, Mother, or is it all fiction-mere poetry without any reality? If you do exist, why do I not see Thee? Is religion a mere fantasy and are You only a figment of man's imagination?" He began to behave in an abnormal manner, most of the time unconscious of the world. He almost gave up food; and sleep left him altogether.

But he did not have to wait very long. He has thus described his first vision of the Mother: "I felt as if my heart were being squeezed like a wet towel. I was overpowered with a great restlessness and a fear that it might not be my lot to realize Her in this life. I could not bear the separation from her any longer. Life seemed to be not worth living. Suddenly my glance fell on the sword that was kept in the Mother's temple. I determined to put an end to my life. When I jumped up like a madman and seized it, suddenly the blessed Mother revealed Herself. The buildings with their different parts, the temple and everything else vanished from my sight, leaving no trace whatsoever, and in their stead I saw a limitless, infinite, effulgent Ocean of Consciousness. As far as the eye could see, the shining billows were madly rushing at me from all sides with a terrific noise, to swallow me up! I was panting for breath. I was caught in the rush and collapsed, unconscious. What was happening in the outside world I did not know; but within me there was a steady flow of undiluted bliss, altogether new, and I felt the presence of the Divine Mother."

Ramakrishna now plunged into hard spiritual practices, and realized by following the multifarious paths of Hinduism and also through the disciplines of Christianity and Islam. Thus in various ways Sri Ramakrishna tasted the bliss of communion with God-sometimes merging himself totally in the Absolute, sometimes as a child of the Divine Mother maintaining an appearance of duality. After all these experiences he declared, 'I have found that it is the same God toward whom all are directing their steps as all rivers mingle at last in the ocean. He lived rest of his life in the state called Bhavamuka, the threshold between normal consciousness and super consciousness. His visions became deeper and more intimate. He no longer had to meditate to behold the Divine Mother. Even while retaining consciousness of the outer world, he would see Her as tangibly as the temples, the trees, the river and the men around him,

While he was going through his spiritual ecstasies, rumors had reached Kamarpukur, his village home, that he had gone mad. As a remedy his mother and elder brother got him married to Sri Sarada Devi, a six years old child but what a marriage it was! Sri Ramakrishna literally worshipped her as the Divine Mother with all rituals. Once while massaging Sri Ramakrishna's feet Holy Mother asked him " how do you look upon me?" Sir Ramakrishna replied, "The Mother in the Kali Temple, is the same that gave birth to this body and now resides at the Nahabat, and she, again, is now massaging my feet. Truly do I see you as a veritable form of the blissful Divine Mother" Their union was on the spiritual plane only. Yet he taught her everything from housekeeping to the knowledge of Brahman. He instructed her in all the practices of the spiritual life. Like him she was purer than purity itself. She was chastity incarnate.

"When the Lotus blooms, bees come of their own accord," Sri Ramakrishna said. Men and women from all walks of life and of different religion came to him for spiritual solace. Whoever came with earnestness felt his unbounded love, and got spiritually uplifted by his presence and words. When God-consciousness falls short, traditions become dogmatic and oppressive and religious teachings lose their transforming power. At a time when the very foundation of religion, faith in God, was crumbling under the relentless blows of materialism and scepticisim, Sri Ramakrishna, through his burning spiritual realizations, demonstrated beyond doubt the reality of God and the validity of the time-honoured teachings of all the prophets and saviours of the past, and thus restored the falling edifice of religion on a secure foundation. Drawn by the magnetism of Sri Ramakrishna's divine personality, people flocked to him from far and near, men and women, young and old, philosophers and theologians, philanthropists and humanists, atheists and agnostics, Hindus and Brahmos, Christians and Muslims, seekers of truth of all races, creeds and castes. His small room in the Dakshineswar temple garden on the outskirts of the city of Calcutta became a veritable parliament of religions.

He passed away on the 16th August 1886. But before that he had specially trained a band of young men to carry on his spiritual mission. These young men renounced the world after his passing away, and formed the monastic Order bearing his name with the motto "For one's own salvation and also for the welfare of the world." Led by the most dynamic and brilliant of them, Swami Vivekananda, they spread his message in India and abroad.